Chapter 12: Dominos
Izzy POV (as the rest of the story will be, unless otherwise specified, since I'm kind of tired of typing this.)
Throughout the rest of the school day, instead of thinking about the dreams that Rose and I had, I was more concerned with Edward. How could somebody read minds, as it seemed he had? And was he going to ever get used to it? Or would he be in pain forever? Assuming, of course, this wasn't just a random occurrence, and would last. That was another question. Was this temporary? And would this weird turn of events simply stop here?
This day was beginning to seem more like a movie plot than real life. Finally, the bell rang for the end of school, and I cleared out as fast as I could. I didn't have much homework, and I had finished it all in class, so I simply stuffed all my books in my locker. I slammed it shut and locked it, trying to get back to my house as fast as possible. I knew that the others would probably want to check on him as well, and I was right, as they were all waiting outside for me. Without a word, we all entered our respective rides and they followed me as we drove out of the parking lot.
We drove moderately fast, but not so fast as to gain unwanted attention. We arrived at my house and congregated in another ring in the middle of my driveway.
"Remember to try to think as softly as you can," I reminded them, "we don't want to hurt him." They all nodded in unison, and in a solemn and anxious procession, we entered my house and made our way to the living room. "Where?" I asked Jasper.
"In the bedroom I figured was your spare," he replied, gesturing with his chin the general direction. We all turned towards the door and opened it, only to see Edward, seeming good as new, and waiting for us, looking like he had just been reading a textbook.
"Hey!" he exclaimed as soon as he saw that we all had entered the room. "I feel much better. I guess it was just the sudden onslaught of thoughts. I still kind of have a slight headache, but I'm good. I'm still fine even when I heard your thoughts outside the door."
At this we all breathed a small sigh of relief. He suddenly winced, almost imperceptibly, but enough. "Yeah, I'm glad to know you're glad I'm better, Emmett, but the sudden change in volume is kind of painful."
"Oh, sorry bro. I'll tone it down." He grinned, possibly because Edward seemed way more normal, berating him for something. "There. Better?"
"Yeah," Edward said, also grinning. "But I can definitely handle that better." We all moved closer to him, sitting on various pieces of furniture. Alice sat on by him on the bed, I sat on the desk left behind by the family who had moved, Rose sitting next to me, and Jasper leaning against it on the other side. Emmett just plopped himself at Rose's feet and seemed like he was thinking particularly hard about something.
"Constipated, Emmett?" I teased him. He scowled playfully at me before replying.
"No. I was just wondering-"
"-how I can read thoughts?" Edward finished for him. I found that particularly creepy and told him so.
"I guess it would be. I'll try not to do that from now on. And I don't know how I can do this. I'm more freaked out about it than you guys are. I mean, all of a sudden, I can just read thoughts." He paused for a moment, reflecting on all the weirdness, I guess. "But, since I really have no way of finding that out, I spent my time wondering about other things, like how come Jasper's thoughts arereally quiet and I can't hear Izzy." At this, everybody turned to look at us, wearing thoughtful faces. I shrugged, and felt Jasper do the same next to me, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes full of mysteries, but mostly looking like he didn't have a clue, same as me.
"There are a lot of questions. A lot more than we have answers, which, by the way, we have none. I mean, is it connected to the weird dreams? What caused it? And a million more." We all thought a while on that one. All of a sudden, I sensed something was not right, coming from the direction of the bed. I instantly whipped my head over to look. What I saw was Alice's eyes rolling back into her head, and her body collapsing back onto the bed. A fraction of a second later, Edward's eyes glazed over and he went limp. Jasper, slightly closer to the bed than I was, and having saw the exact same thing I had, leapt forward to catch him, and leaned him against the wall that the bed was pushed up against. I, having gotten there just behind him, assisted in making sure Edward did not fall over.
I moved over to check over Alice as Jasper did the same to Edward. We checked their vital signs; their pulses, breathing, and that kind of thing. This was something I had sadly had to do before, due to my history. And obviously, the same thing was true with Jasper. We glanced at each other, conveying with a look that the signs were normal. We were forced to turn our attention back to them as their pulses simultaneously sped up a little, before going back to normal. By this point, I could tell that Rosalie and Emmett had gathered near us, trying to see what was wrong with them, worry present in their eyes. I slowly straightened up, sharing another look with Jasper. They seemed completely normal, except for the obvious.
"Should we call 911?" voiced Rosalie, heavily laden with concern.
"We should wait a bit before we do that. They don't seem to be in any immediate medical danger, and I think that this isn't what you would call normal." Jasper delivered this in a crisp, clear tone, clearly conveying the situation and the course of action that would be taken.
"I agree. Besides, it looks like they're coming back." At my words, they turned to look as Alice, moaning, shifted a little before slowly sitting up and looking around. Edward, on the left of her, seemed dazed, as he blinked in confusion.
"What was that?" he mumbled to himself. He then proceeded to shake his head, trying to clear it. He was clearly a little shaken.
"That…was a vision," Alice said, also a little shaken, but seemingly more used to this kind of thing happening. "You must've seen it through my thoughts."
"Care to share, Alice?" asked Emmett, looking confused and a little angry. Perhaps because he had concluded that she had been keeping a secret.
"Well…I guess I kind of have to now, don't I." It was phrased as a question, but was more of a statement of the inevitable. Like she had expected this, too. "It started when I was a little kid, maybe around six. I was playing around one day, and all of a sudden, I fainted. My mom was looking after me then, and she rushed me to the hospital. The doctors couldn't really figure out what had happened, so they just monitored me until I woke up and sent me home.
I figured out pretty quickly that I wasn't normal. While I had passed out, I had had my first vision. The more major ones cause me to slip out of consciousness for a while. Usually my eyes kind of glaze over and I get small glimpses. Other times, I just have feelings that something is going to happen. I mostly kept these to myself. I had made the mistake of telling my mom that while passed out, I had seen that the school where I was attending was going to catch on fire. She didn't believe me, of course, thinking it was just my imagination. But then, a few days later, the school burnt down. She was worried, but just dismissed it as a bizarre coincidence. After that, it was seemingly normal for awhile. I kept my feelings and brief glimpses as a secret. I realized that if I told anybody, they would either think I was just making it up, or I was crazy. I didn't have another big vision again for awhile, when I was ten.
Luckily this time, it happened when I was by myself, in my room. But what I saw was blood. So much blood. I couldn't tell who it was coming from, but I saw my dad's reflection in the mirror next to the pool of it. It looked like the mirror in my house, next to the living room couch. I knew I had to tell someone, since it seemed like it was going to hit close to home. I had never been wrong before. So when my dad came home that afternoon, during fall break, I remember, I told him that something bad was going to happen. I told him that I had visions, and I had seen a giant pool of blood, and that he had been standing near it. He didn't seem to believe me, so I told him how I had seen the fire before, and how I knew that he had had a bad day and his boss had yelled at him and cut his pay for being hung over at work. He seemed to need further convincing, so I told him that I had seen him with that other woman. That I knew he had cheated on my mom just last night.
He freaked out. My mom was in the backyard, getting some vegetables for dinner. His face turned scarlet, and the vein in his neck started throbbing. He set his briefcase down and I remember being terrified of him in that moment. I could tell he was furious, but he struggled to control it as he asked me how I knew that. He wouldn't believe me when I said I could see the future. He was convinced that I was going to tell my mom and that he would be cut off from the small fortune she had inherited. He needed it to cover his gambling debts. He started yelling at me, calling me all sorts of names, and I remember just standing there, crying. And then…and then he picked up a little ornamental stone statue from the mantle and…and he just started bashing my head, over and over again. My vision started getting blurry, but I saw my mom coming back in, standing there, screaming. She dropped the vegetables she had gathered, and ran towards my dad, trying to push him away from me, but he just kept on hitting me, so hard that I threw up blood. I blacked out after that. I was told later that my mom had to hit my dad over the head to knock him out for a little while so that she could call 911. My dad was sent to prison, and my mom tried to recover as best she could.
She tried to stay strong for me, and that made her draw back a little. She was still a good mom, just more distant. She started an interior design business, and I resorted to fashion. And the rest was the rest. I've known since then that these visions I have, visions of the future should be kept to myself," she finished, voice still fairly strong. It had broken several times while describing her dad attempting to murder her, but the whole thing was delivered as a sort of factual narrative, slightly apart from herself. "I had some trouble coping, so I went to go see a therapist, and, thought I couldn't tell her about the visions, she helped me a lot. I've pretty much dealt with it by now. So there's no need to say you had no idea, or that you're sorry. I've faced it, and I'm healed now." And I could tell she meant it. And, I presumed, everybody else could too. There was complete silence as we all digested her words.
Finally, Emmett broke it, as was his thing. "So, then…what was your vision of this time?" This immediately piqued all of our curiosity, as to what the answer would be.
"Well, they always take some deciphering, since they're a little vague and confusing as Edward can tell you," at this, Edward nodded, "but I'm pretty sure it means that someone's going to try to attack us, or, as it seems, more like Jasper and Izzy."
With this news, I had an idea of what kind of enemy it was. I could tell that Jasper had drawn his own conclusions too. "Can you tell what they looked like?"
"Um, it was a few guys who looked like goons, but the one who looked like their leader, he had dark, like sandy blonde hair, and green eyes, but he had this crazy look about him, and he had a girl with him, with really bright red hair, who looked kind of sadistic." I knew exactly who she was talking about. Jasper and I shared a loaded look.
"It's Victoria…" I flashbacked to her vicious smile, baring her teeth as she basked in the pain of the girl she had beaten. She didn't stop, she just kept on hurting her, seeming like she was getting high off of the screams of pain.
"..and James," Jasper finished for me. I shuddered. James.
"Wait, how do you know them?" asked Rose.
"Victoria was a nasty bitch who got off on the pain of the beginners that she beat up. I hated her, and she hated me. Although that was because I gave her what she deserved," I said, smirking. "Apparently, she underestimated me, and thought I would be easy prey. She found out the hard way that I wasn't. She's had a major grudge ever since."
"James is her 'companion'," Jasper continued, showing obvious disdain for him. "He's a slimy little bastard and basically the male version of Victoria." He didn't seem like he was going to go on, so I continued.
"Yeah, and he hates me too. He challenged me to a fight, seeking revenge for little Vicky, but I couldn't let him win. And I didn't. I don't know how Jasper knows them, though." I deliberately shifted the attention back to Jasper. I had my suspicions about him, but he'd never confirmed anything yet.
"Well, my past is probably pretty similar to Izzy's. Well, at least, parts of it. Edward doesn't even know what I did before I fell in with his family. I guess I'll just summarize a bit for background knowledge.
I was born in a small town in Texas, and I spent the best years of my childhood there. Up until I was my parents died. The official reason was only 'mysterious causes'. Nobody knew anything, but I could just tell they were murdered, somehow. But everyone else was just content to bury it under the rug so it could go back to being the town where people left their front doors unlocked. I heard that they were going to put me into the foster care system, but I had no intention of being a ward of the state. I took all the cash that my parents had stashed in the house. They didn't leave behind a lot, but it was enough for me. I disappeared. The law enforcement all just dismissed me as another troubled kid who ran away from home. It wasn't like they could find me. I was pretty good at staying unnoticed. I made my way through the seedier underbellies of cities, and when my cash supply started dwindling, I did take up street fighting, like Izzy. I met James there. He rubbed me the wrong way, from the start. I could tell he was a real shitty person. Anyway, I was new at the game, but I was good, and I started to have a reputation, since I had never been beaten yet. He challenged me, I accepted, I whooped him. He was pretty humiliated, but as far as I could tell, he left to lick his wounds and fester a bit. I moved on.
Eventually I found my way to a good ol' guy who took me in and raised me as his own for a while. That was when Ed here and his mom showed up. They were in need of a kind soul, and the same one that took me in took them in too. We lived a pretty good life at his little ranch, but then, of course, it ended. He died in a car crash. By then we were a kind of family, I got adopted, Ms. Mason, Edward's mom, went through some hard times, we moved near Chicago. A couple years later, I was still convinced I was a charity case, and I ran off again, back to fighting, this time in the streets of Chicago. Eventually I got sick of life like that, since I pissed James off again when he challenged me to a rematch, and I beat him again. He had gotten better, but I had too. I was pretty good by that time. I refined my fighting style that year, and I had a reputation again. I was still unbeaten. But he threatened me, and this time, I could tell he was serious, and wouldn't stop until either he killed me, or I killed him in. I didn't want to do that. I kind of liked fighting, yeah, but I still tried to stay out of other things. Murder was something I definitely didn't want to have anything to do with.
I went back home, we grew closer, even though, I have to admit, I still snuck out sometimes to fight. It's a great feeling, and I found that I had the ability to excel. I sneak out regularly to train, too. Sorry, Ed." Edward seemed like he now had known worse, and simply nodded in acknowledgement.
"You never told me about before you found Mr. S."
"I didn't think you'd want to know. You didn't tell me about you before Mr. S, either." At this, Edward nodded again, accepting it.
"So James and Victoria are coming after Izzy and Jasper?" Rose said, trying to clarify things. "Then what do we do?"
"We?" I asked, unable to believe that after everything, and threat on their lives, at least Rose out of my friends was going to still going to stick by me. Jasper had a similar look of disbelief on his face. The others simply nodded.
"Well, I am not going to let you two face them alone." Emmett said, making it seem like that was assumed from the start.
"Me too." Alice, out of all of them, had to understand the risk. And yet she wasn't backing down.
"You're my kind of my brother, Jasper. And Izzy's my friend." Edward seemed a little insulted that his brother didn't expect him to be there for him.
"And you're all of our friends. Besides, James and Victoria seem like they're the exact same people I hate the most." Rose seemed like she was ready to kick ass and take names.
"You guys do know that there's the strong probability of death? Either ours or theirs because of us." I had to make sure they knew what they were getting into.
There was little hesitation as they all stood by their words. I felt like ever since the dreams, and Edward's ability had come to light, suddenly events had fallen upon us one right after the other, like a chain of dominos. I also felt like I finally knew what it was to have friends that would always be there for you, like the strongest net in the world, always there in a system of unbreakable support. Even though I had only technically known them a pretty short time, I felt like we knew each other, deep down. And I knew that if I was in any of their positions, I would do the same thing for them.
"Thank you." I felt like it needed to be said. Everybody nodded, most with small heartfelt smiles. "I guess there's nothing like a potential life and death situation to bond everyone together."
AN/: Aaaaaand….mushiness! As you could probably tell, that's it for this chapter. I want to say thanks for the reviews I got. They made me feel all gooey inside. That's probably why there was so much mush in those last few paragraphs. Or, my version of mush, anyways. :) I felt that I should lay down some of the others' back stories there. So now, really all that's left is…let's see, all of the girls have gone…and Jasper. So who's left? That's right, my smart little cloudlings. (Whoa, that's a weird name for a collective group, isn't it?) Edward and Emmett. E&E. Edwardo and Emmetailia. Yeah. I think I'm a little crazy from all the Monday. Monday is my least favorite day…..because it's Monday. Virtual hi-five poke for all those who hear what I'm saying! (I don't like to hi-five, so I always just poke people's palms instead. Yeah, I'm weird.)
